graffiti
by the blanket
Summary: FLUFF. SasuSaku. “You give me the kind of feeling people write novels about.”


**title: **graffiti**  
pairing:** SasuSaku.   
**summary: **Plotless fluff. SasuSaku. "You give me the kind of feeling people write novels about."

**warnings: **Extreme fluff.

**notes:** This is what happens when I cannot sleep. In case it is not totally clear—a real possibility—what she wrote is in the summary line. :) And, this is vaguely future!canon—it takes place in some happy, hopefully not-too distant one.

**disclaimer: **_Naruto_ isn't mine, and I make no money from writing this.

* * *

Sakura had never written anything before.

Beyond her scribbled mission reports, her haphazard notes on medical theory, her missives to her mentor, her life, she realized, was one largely divorced from writing in any meaningful respect. Not that her mission reports weren't important, or her notes incoherent—quite the opposite. However, she'd long resigned herself to the fact that she wasn't the sort who would ever write anything for herself. The mission reports were for files, the flashcards on medical theory had long been committed to memory, and her notes to Tsunade-shishou were no doubt discarded immediately upon reading.

She didn't know what it was to keep a diary the way Ino did, to write for pleasure the way Jiraiya-sama certainly seemed to, or even to keep a planner, the way Tenten did. Her life, for the most part, was lived entirely in the present. She had no time to record and to reflect, and while—for the most part—this came as a blessing, she wondered what it was to look back on her life and feel it twice.

There were certainly moments she wished she could _live_ twice, and tonight, she was certain, was one of them.

It wasn't every night that she could sleep in the arms of the man she'd loved for what seemed to be a lifetime, after all.

For a while, she'd stayed awake, and just watched him. She relished the feel of his arms around her, of his breath at the nape of her neck, and the rise and fall of him behind her. This was a different sort of happiness from anything she was used to—different from the triumph that came from beating Ino at a friendly spar, and different from the contentment that came from watching Naruto and Sai interact without violence at Ichiraku, and different from the exhilaration of getting a particularly challenging jutsu right on her first try.

This happiness was words tumbling over in her mouth, was the sudden awareness of her heartbeat (and his), was the all-encompassing notion that _this_ and _here_ with _him_ was everything and always, impossible and real, was, in effect, the culmination of a lifetime's worth of sorrow—was the knowledge that to be here with him had, in effect, been worth every trouble it had taken to get to this point, to this moment.

It was everything, feeling him steady and warm behind her, and knowing that he would be there when she woke up in the morning.

Sakura smiled to herself, and grappled in the darkness for the pen she'd been using to make notes on yet another medical tome. She turned in his arms so that she was presented with the expanse of skin near his upper arm, left bare by his sleeveless shirt.

So far, he'd stirred once, and then twice again, but hadn't woken even when the pen had dipped too sharply into the small scar near his elbow. Sakura rather thought it a sign of progress—at the very least, he was sleeping better than he had in the hospital when he had first returned. At the very least, he was sleeping better in his own bed.

At the very least, he was sleeping better beside her.

The words were written with pain-staking care, their letters distinct, and the spaces between, remarkably even. She hoped the sentiment behind them, in them, would be just as clear in the morning. Even more, she hoped that when Sasuke saw the fruits of her labor, that he would understand, and even more, that he would agree.

Sakura had never written anything before—nothing that meant nearly as much to her as what she was writing now—but she knew, almost instinctively, that what was there was truth.

She had written her heart on his sleeve.

Satisfied, and smiling—and hopeful that, even despite the darkness, her sharp eyes had not failed her and her words hadn't come out slanted—she leaned back, closed her eyes, and finally surrendered to sleep.

* * *

Happy New Year, all! :)


End file.
